The third Gordon Conference in Tuberculosis Drug Development will be held at Kimball Union Academy, Meriden New Hampshire, from July 3, 2005 to July 8, 2005. The first conference was held at Colby-Sawyer College New London, NH in 2001. The meeting was a great success as it began to define, through open discussion, the chemistry and biological activities of macromolecules from M. tuberculosis that had potential as being drug targets. The 2003 meeting showed significant advances in the field, as many of the targets proposed in 2001, were validated and in drug discovery programs by 2003. The field has advanced even further and there are now several targets with inhibitors in that are lead optimization and pre-clinical trials. The main focus of the 2005 meeting will be to further stimulate research in TB drug discovery. We have planned 9 sessions that roughly coincided with the drug discovery process (ie, target selection to clinical trials). A theme of the 2005 conference will be on new drugs to treat drug-resistant, persistent and latent M. tuberculosis infections.